How the Benghazi Movie Could Affect the 2016 Election

Glenn watched a screening of 13 Hours, which opens Friday, and recommended everybody to go see it. The movie details the grim hours when the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked by Islamic militants on September 11–12, 2012.

"What’s really tragic is, you’re not going to see a damn Democrat anywhere near this movie," Glenn said on radio Thursday. "It does not get into politics at all."

That being said, Glenn pointed out the movie offers hints about Hillary Clinton's mistakes throughout and following the ordeal, despite not mentioning her by name.

"If you can get Democrats to come see this movie, then all you have to do is when you get out of the parking lot, you just play that little clip of Hillary where she says, 'What difference does it make?'" Glenn said. "You play that, and they'll go out of their minds."

On his TV show Thursday at 5pm ET, Glenn will be interviewing some of the heroes who were on the ground during the Benghazi attack.

"You will see who they are and how they were treated at the beginning before there was any problem," Glenn said. "I know the stories of people in government, that's the way they treat these guys, like absolute garbage."

Check out the trailer for 13 Hours below.

Listen to the segment with Glenn discussing the movie on The Glenn Beck Program.

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

GLENN: Last night, I saw a screening of 13 Hours, which opens Friday. And everybody should see it. And what's really tragic is, you're not going to see a damn Democrat anywhere near this movie. And not because it takes down the president because it doesn't at all. It does not get into politics at all.

STU: You did say that it doesn't mention the president at all. And it does.

JEFFY: At the beginning.

STU: The only thing that it does about the president in the entire movie, that I noticed -- there is a quick mention at the very beginning, you're right, Jeffy -- but there's one in the middle where they say the time he was briefed.

GLENN: Yes.

STU: And it's just a passing mention of when he was briefed. But I'll tell you, it's not in the end of the movie.

JEFFY: No, it's early.

STU: It's pretty early in the situation that he knows about this.

GLENN: And afterwards, you see the CIA people calling for help and saying, "Help us. Help us. Help us." And you see the military -- one of the disturbing scenes is -- and it's just real quick. I mean, the only mentions where they're indicting people is, you see hours into this -- you'll see at the very beginning, they're ready to scramble the warplanes. I mean, the minute it happens, you see the military spring in action. Where are the planes? Where are the ships? Let's go. Stand ready. Let's wait for the command.

JEFFY: And that's when you're two or three hours of the 13 hours, and that's when POTUS is being briefed.

GLENN: Yeah. Yes.

STU: Uh-huh.

GLENN: Then they will just clip -- for me, one of the lasting images -- and it's only on screen for maybe about four seconds -- are the fighter jets on the tarmac with the canopy open --

JEFFY: Yeah. Yes.

GLENN: -- and the pilots standing next to their jet, ready to go.

STU: Waiting to get in and go.

GLENN: Just waiting to go.

STU: And there was an audible groan in the theater when that happened.

JEFFY: No kidding.

GLENN: There are a few things -- honestly, this movie will shake you to your core. It really will. It really will.

And anybody who knows the story of Benghazi, and if you paid attention to what the White House said and what they said they did -- I think what it was is, when they sent the first drone over, they said, you know -- I remember the White House saying, "We didn't know what was going on. We were getting phone calls and sketching information." Bullcrap. You had a drone over -- over the embassy. We know that. We know that.

And I remember saying for weeks, "There was no drone in the area? There was not a single drone in the sky?" Yeah, there were drones in the sky. They knew. They were watching. They were watching the whole time. And that was one of the infuriating things is when they were watching, and they could see the entire thing. And they never showed this. But you know that -- the president wasn't. He was sleeping. But you know that everybody in the situation room was watching these guys die.

How somebody didn't go -- honestly, I would have gone to prison. How somebody didn't walk up to the president and grab him by the collar and say, "What the hell is wrong with you, man? What is wrong with you?"

STU: Yeah, there's not a moment in this movie where you see Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama pick up the phone and say, "Oh, I don't care about those people," and hang up.

GLENN: Nope. Nope.

STU: But you see they got wind of this early enough, that if they made it a priority, it would have stopped. If they made it a priority, if they said, "I don't care what's happening. Stop all the meetings. I'm going to stay up an extra half an hour past my bedtime." Whatever they had to do and made it a priority, the outcome would have been different.

JEFFY: Yeah.

GLENN: I think that's overreaching. They didn't even have to make it a priority. All they had to say was, "Get them. Get them. Go save them." We're the United States of America. They were on the back of pickup trucks. As the president likes to say all the time, "What, a bunch of guys on the back of the pickup -- you just got your ass kicked by a bunch of guys on the back of pickup trucks because somebody had a different agenda. And I don't know what that agenda was. But it wasn't doing the right thing.

So let's talk a little bit about -- first of all, Jeffy, we haven't heard what you thought about it.

JEFFY: I enjoyed the heck out of it. And I enjoyed that it was the story of Benghazi. And if you don't know the backstory, it's a good war movie.

GLENN: Sure.

JEFFY: It's a good battle movie. If you don't know the backstory. Knowing the backstory like Stu said and you, you're angry and you're frustrated. You want somebody to do the right thing. You want somebody to say, "It doesn't matter that we were running guns and people will know, save them."

GLENN: You've got to get people to go see this movie. Because if you can get Democrats to come see this movie, then all you have to do is when you get out of the parking lot, you just play that little clip of Hillary where she says, "What difference does it make, if it was a bunch of guys who were having a party in the middle of the night."

JEFFY: Right.

GLENN: You play that, and they'll go out of their minds. They'll go out of their minds.

STU: Yeah. And Jeffy is right. If it's a story that is not telling something that's true, it's just a good war movie. The fact that it's telling you something that is true, it's in a lot of ways difficult to watch. Because you're living through an experience that is -- that your country let people down that were fighting for it.

JEFFY: Yep.

GLENN: Here's one of the things that's really powerful and so true and the reason why I'm so ashamed. Is at the end -- not at the end, but at some point during the war scene where they know they're going to die, they just assume they're all going to die, and one of them says, "Why am I here? Why am I even here? I volunteered to come over here. I'm going to die in a country I don't even care about for a cause I don't even understand."

And he says, "I volunteered at the beginning because I believed in something." And the other guy looked at him and says, "All those things, those are all long gone." And it's true. It's true. Every one of our soldiers, I don't know what you're fighting for. And they don't know what they're fighting for. What are you doing?

And it really rang so true to me. So here's a hard thing. I got to talk to these guys tonight at 5:00.

STU: Wow.

GLENN: I don't even -- I mean, I get weird in front of guys like this, especially when they're real heroes. Marcus Luttrell is one of my good friends. He's like a brother. Just love him. I'm so awkward around him. I'm so awkward around him. Because I have so much respect for him. I get weird like that. In a weird way, it's like Michael Buble, I have so much respect of what he does as a performer and everything else, I get weird around him. It happens every time around heroes like this.

I'm so awkward. And I thought of this last night as we were in the car driving home, I said, "What am I going to say to these guys? What am I possibly going to say to these guys?"

"Hey, I'm sorry. Hey, you were great." What do you say? I mean, I've got a billion questions. A billion questions.

JEFFY: It's going to be a long show.

STU: Yeah, that would be a long show.

I'd like to get their reaction on how the administration and Democrats, in particular, Hillary Clinton supporters in particular are trying to challenge their -- their series of events. Because they're basically trying to say none of this happened. They didn't tell them to stand down. You know, that these guys are -- I mean, they're basically accusing them of being liars.

And, you know, they're -- they're saying, "Wait a minute. We didn't even get interviewed for these commissions that they say supposedly proved that there were -- that none of this stuff happened. We didn't get interviewed for them. They didn't even come to us, the people in the middle of the battle, and interview us about it." You know, the way they're treating them is despicable, and I would love to hear their reaction on that because it has to be infuriating.

You go through this situation, and when the same group of people, basically, accuse you of being nothing and disparage you the entire time, and then afterwards, after you save their lives, they're still essentially doing it.

GLENN: Pat, does this sound like Wounded Knee to you at all? It sounds exactly like the same story. The guys who tried to tell the truth, the government just demolished. And anybody who told the lie got the medal.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: No, the Indians did it first -- they all got the Congressional Medal of Honor. The general and I think it was a couple of colonels that said, "That's not what happened. I was there. That's not what happened." Those guys, their careers were destroyed.

PAT: Yeah. And Hillary was just asked last week or the week before, "Well, somebody is lying. It's either you or it's these guys who were actually there that are now on Fox News elsewhere talking about it." And her response was, "It's not me." So she essentially accused them of lying. You know, rather than say, "Well, I wouldn't say anybody is lying. It's just different perspective or whatever."

GLENN: That's why, these guys can make their case. Because, A, you will see who they are and how they were treated at the beginning before there was any problem. And if you don't think that's true -- I mean, I have guys -- I have guys who work for me that have -- have, you know, when they were in the military, they did some of the stuff that these guys -- and they verified that, "Yep. That's the way you're treated. That's the way Hillary Clinton will come in and treat you. That's the way any of them will." So I know the stories of people in government, that's the way they treat these guys, like absolute garbage. So you know that's true.

And the -- to me, the way you know that this -- they're not telling a lie is, there's not one thing in this movie that is on the screen that these guys didn't know. There's not one thing. They didn't say, "Here's what was happening in Washington." They didn't even say why the ambassador was there. They only told it from their perspective. This is what happened on the ground.

So what is going to believe -- I mean, they're not reaching out. What's happening is the administration is reaching out and saying, "They're not telling the truth." Well, you guys weren't on the ground. And all they're doing is telling what happened on the ground.

STU: Yeah, they're the ones being shot at, not you.

GLENN: Right. They were the ones. So I'm going to listen to you about what their story is. Because they're not saying what your story is. You're saying what their story is.

STU: Right.

GLENN: Which one am I going to believe? But, again, that's why you really -- you just really will not get anybody from the left to go see this movie. Because it's an out-and-out indictment on them.

Featured Image: Jack Silva, played by John Krasinski. Photo courtesy thirteenhoursmovie.com.

It's time for our April 29, 2019 edition of our Candidate Power Rankings. We get to add two new candidates, write about a bunch of people that have little to no chance of winning, and thank the heavens we are one day closer to the end of all of this.

In case you're new here, read our explainer about how all of this works:

The 2020 Democratic primary power rankings are an attempt to make sense out of the chaos of the largest field of candidates in global history.

Each candidate gets a unique score in at least thirty categories, measuring data like polling, prediction markets, fundraising, fundamentals, media coverage, and more. The result is a candidate score between 0-100. These numbers will change from week to week as the race changes.

The power rankings are less a prediction on who will win the nomination, and more a snapshot of the state of the race at any given time. However, early on, the model gives more weight to fundamentals and potentials, and later will begin to prioritize polling and realities on the ground.

These power rankings include only announced candidates. So, when you say "WAIT!! WHERE'S XXXXX????" Read the earlier sentence again.

If you're like me, when you read power rankings about sports, you've already skipped ahead to the list. So, here we go.

17. Eric Swalwell: 20.2 (Last week: 16th / 20.2)

Democrats said there was obstruction in the Mueller report. Swalwell said there “certainly" was collusion.

Democrats said surveillance of the Trump campaign was no big deal. Swalwell said there was no need to apologize even if it was.

Democrats said William Barr mishandled the release of the Mueller report. Swalwell said he must resign.

Democrats say they want gun restrictions. Swalwell wants them all melted down and the liquid metal to be poured on the heads of NRA members. (Probably.)

16. Seth Moulton: 20.6 (NEW)

Who is Seth Moulton?

No, I'm asking.

Moulton falls into the category of congressman looking to raise his profile and make his future fundraising easier— not someone who is actually competing for the presidency.

He tried to block Nancy Pelosi as speaker, so whatever help he could get from the establishment is as dry as Pelosi's eyes when the Botox holds them open for too long.

Moulton is a veteran, and his military service alone is enough to tell you that he's done more with his life than I'll ever do with mine. But it's hard to see the road to the White House for a complete unknown in a large field of knowns.

Don't take my word for it, instead read this depressing story that he's actually telling people on purpose:

"I said, you know, part of my job is take tough questions," Moulton told the gathered business and political leaders. "You can ask even really difficult questions. And there was still silence. And then finally, someone in the way back of the room raised her hand, and she said, 'Who are you?' "

14. Tulsi Gabbard: 25.2 (Last week: 14th / 25.9)

No word on who won the coveted handi-capable gender-neutral sodium-sensitive sub-demographic.

She received a mostly false rating for her attack on the Trump administration regarding its new policy on pork inspections, a topic not exactly leading the news cycle. Being from Hawaii, the state which leads the nation in Spam consumption, she was probably surprised when this didn't go mega viral.

13. Andrew Yang: 27.2 (Last week: 12th / 27.1)

Yang has a few go-to lines when he's on the campaign trail, such as: "The opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math." Another is apparently the Jeb-esque "Chant my name! Chant my name!"

Yang continues to be one of the more interesting candidates in this race, essentially running a remix of the "One Tough Nerd" formula that worked for Michigan Governor Rick Snyder.

I highly recommend listening to his interview with Ben Shapiro, where Yang earns respect as the only Democratic presidential candidate in modern history to actually show up to a challenging and in-depth interview with a knowledgeable conservative.

But hidden in the Shapiro interview is the nasty little secret of the Yang campaign. His policy prescriptions, while still very liberal, come off as far too sane for him to compete in this Stalin look-alike contest.

Seems like a logical question, but only someone who is high on tailpipe fumes would think it was okay to ask in a Democratic primary. Hickenlooper would be better served by just transitioning to a female and demanding other candidates are asked why they don't have a transgendered VP.

10. Julian Castro: 35.7 (Last week: 9th / 36.2)

Lowering expectations is a useful strategy when your wife asks you to put together an Ikea end table, or when you've successfully convinced Charlize Theron to come home with you. But is it a successful campaign strategy?

Julian Castro is about to find out. He thinks the fact that everyone thinks he's crashing and burning on the campaign trail so far is an "advantage." Perhaps he can take the rest of the field by surprise on Super Tuesday when they finally realize he's actually running.

7. Elizabeth Warren: 45.3 (Last week: 6th / 46.0)

Elizabeth Warren is bad at everything she does while she's campaigning. I don't really even watch Game of Thrones, and the idea that Warren would write a story about how the show proves we need more powerful women makes me cringe.

Of course, more powerful people of all the 39,343 genders are welcome, but it's such a transparent attempt at jumping on the back of a pop-culture event to pander to female voters, it's sickening.

6. Cory Booker: 54.9 (Last week: 5th / 55.5)

Booker is tied with Kamala Harris for the most missed Senate votes of the campaign so far. He gets criticized for this, but I think he should miss even more votes.

Booker is also pushing a national day off on Election Day—because the approximately six months of early voting allowed in every state just isn't enough.

Of course, making it easier to vote doesn't mean people are going to vote for Booker. So he's throwing trillions of dollars in bribes (my word, not his) to seal the deal.

Bookermania is in full effect, with 40 whole people showing up to his appearance in Nevada. Local press noted that the people were of "varying ages," an important distinction to most other crowds, which are entirely comprised of people with the same birthday.

5. Robert Francis O’Rourke: 60.2 (Last week: 4th /62.6)

Kirsten Gillibrand gave less than 2% of her income to charity. The good news is that she gave about seven times as much as Beto O'Rourke. Robert Francis, or Bob Frank, also happens to be one of the wealthiest candidates in the race. His late seventies father-in-law has been estimated to be worth as much as $20 billion, though the number is more likely to be a paltry $500 million.

He's also all but disappeared. It's a long race, and you don't win a nomination in April of the year before election day. If he's being frugal and figuring out what he believes, it might be a good move.

But it's notable that all the "pretty boy" hype that Bob Frank owned going into this race has been handed over to Mayor Pete. Perhaps Beto is spending his time working on curbing the sweating, the hand gestures, and the issues with jumping on counters like a feline.

4. Pete Buttigieg: 62.9 (Last week: 3rd / 62.9)

When we first put candidates in tiers earlier this year, we broke everyone into five categories from "Front Runners" to "Eh, no." In the middle is a category called "Maybe, if everything goes right," and that's where we put Pete Buttigieg.

Well, everything has gone right so far. But Mayor Pete will be interested to learn that the other 19 candidates in this race are not going to hand him this nomination. Eventually, they will start saying negative things about him (they've started the opposition research process already), and it will be interesting to see how Petey deals with the pressure. We've already seen how it has affected Beto in a similar situation.

The media has spoken endlessly about the sexual orientation of Buttigieg, but not every Democratic activist is impressed. Barney Frank thinks the main reason he's getting this amount of attention is because he is gay. And for some, being a gay man just means you're a man, which isn't good enough.

When you base your vote on a candidate's genitals, things can get confusing.

Other headlines:

Pete Buttigieg sides with striking Stop & Shop workers "You're not free if you work for a living and you can't get by," Buttigieg said ahead of a weekend of campaigning in New Hampshire. (Note: This is a similar argument used to defend slavery... "By 1860 it had become a standard part of the proslavery rationale, made it a central thesis in their arguments. (1) that the condition of the so-called free worker of the North was already fearful and was becoming increasingly more horrible; (2) that the free-labor system enslaved the worker just as much as the chattel-slavery system; and (3) that wage slavery was infinitely worse for the worker than chattel slavery.")

3. Kamala Harris: 68.6 (Last week: 1st / 69.1)

#1 - Harris launched with much fanfare and an adoring media. She has since lost her momentum. Mayor Pete and former Mayor Bernie have the hype, and Kamala is fading.

#2 - Harris is playing the long game. She showed she can make an impact with her launch, but realizes that a media "win" ten months before an important primary means nothing. She's working behind the scenes and cleaning up with donations, prominent supporters, and loads of celebrities to execute an Obama style onslaught.

I tend to be in category 2, but I admit that's somewhat speculative. Harris seems to be well positioned to make a serious run, locking up more than double the amount of big Clinton and Obama fundraisers than any other candidate.

One interesting policy development for Harris that may hurt her in the primary is her lack of utter disgust for the nation of Israel. There's basically one acceptable position in a Democratic primary when it comes to Israel, which is that it's a racist and terrorist state, existing only to torture innocent Palestinians.

Certainly no one is going to mistake Harris for Donald Trump, but a paragraph like this is poison to the modern Democratic primary voter:

"Her support for Israel is central to who she is," Harris' campaign communications director, Lily Adams, told McClatchy. "She is firm in her belief that Israel has a right to exist and defend itself, including against rocket attacks from Gaza."

Just portraying the rocket attacks as "attacks" is controversial these days for Democrats, and claiming they are responses to attacks indicates you think the Jeeeewwwwwwwws aren't the ones responsible for the start of every hostility. Heresy!

2. Bernie Sanders: 69.2 (Last week: 2nd / 68.3)

It's entirely consistent with Sandersism to avoid giving to private charity. Why would you? Sanders believes the government does everything better than the private sector. He should be giving his money to the government.

Of course, he doesn't. He takes the tax breaks from the evil Trump tax plan he derides. He spends his money on fabulous vacation homes. He believes in socialism for thee, not for me.

1. Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.: 78.8 (NEW)

Joe has run for president 113 times during his illustrious career, successfully capturing the presidency in approximately zero of his campaigns.

However, when the eternally woke Barack Obama had a chance to elevate a person of color, woman, or anything from the rainbow colored QUILTBAG, he instead chose the oldest, straightest, whitest guy he could find, and our man Robinette was the beneficiary.

Biden has been through a lot, much of it of his own making. Forget about his plagiarism and propensity to get a nostril full of each passing females' hair, his dealings while vice president in both Ukraine and China are a major general election vulnerability— not to mention a legal vulnerability for his children. But hey, win the presidency and you can pardon everyone, right?

His supposed appeal to rust belt voters makes him, on paper, a great candidate to take on Trump. The Clinton loss hinged on about 40,000 voters changing their mind from Hillary to Donald in a few states—the exact areas where victory could possibly be secured by someone named "Middle Class Joe" (as he alone calls himself.)

No one loves Joe Biden more than Joe Biden, and there's a relatively convincing case for his candidacy. But we must remember this unquestionable truth: Joe Biden is not good at running for president.

If only Karl Marx were alive today to see his wackiest ideas being completely paraded around. He would be so proud. I can see him now: Sprawled out on his hammock from REI, fiddling around for the last vegan potato chip in the bag as he binge-watches Academy Awards on his 70-inch smart TV. In between glances at his iPhone X (he's got a massive Twitter following), he sips Pepsi. In his Patagonia t-shirt and NIKE tennis shoes, he writes a line or two about "oppression" and "the have-nots" as part of his job for Google.

His house is loaded with fresh products from all the woke companies. In the fridge, he's got Starbucks, he loves their soy milk. He's got Ben & Jerry's in the freezer. He tells everyone that, if he shaved, he'd use Gillette, on account of the way they stand up for the Have-Nots. But, really, Marx uses Dollar Shave Club because it's cheaper, a higher quality. Secretly, he loves Chic-Fil-A. He buys all his comic books off Amazon. The truth is, he never thought people would actually try to make the whole "communism" thing work.

Companies have adopted a form of socialism that is sometimes called woke capitalism. They use their status as corporations to spread a socialist message and encourage people to do their part in social justice. The idea of companies in America using socialism at all is as confusing and ridiculous as a donkey in a prom dress: How did this happen? Is it a joke? Why is nobody bursting out in laughter? How far is this actually going to go? Does someone actually believe that they can take a donkey to prom?

Companies have adopted a form of socialism that is sometimes called woke capitalism.

On the micro level, Netflix has made some socialist moves: The "like/dislike" voting system was replaced after a Netflix-sponsored stand-up special by Amy Schumer received as tidal wave of thumb-downs. This summer, Netflix will take it a step further in the name of squashing dissent by disabling user comments and reviews. And of course most of us share a Netflix account with any number of people. Beyond that, they're as capitalist as the next mega-company.

Except for one area: propaganda. Netflix has started making movie-length advertisements for socialism. They call them "documentaries," but we know better than that. The most recent example is "Knock Down the House," which comes out tomorrow. The 86-minute-long commercial for socialism follows four "progressive Democrat" women who ran in the 2018 midterms, including our favorite socialist AOC.

Here's a snippet from the movie so good that you'll have to fight the urge to wave your USSR flag around the room:

This is what the mainstream media wants you to believe. They want you to be moved. They want the soundtrack to inspire you to go out and do something.

Just look at how the mainstream media treated the recent high-gloss "documentary" about Ilhan Omar, "Time for Ilhan." It received overwhelmingly bad ratings on IMDb and other user-review platforms, but got a whopping 93% on the media aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

This is exactly what the media wants you to think of when you hear the word socialism. Change. Empowerment. Strength. Diversity. They spend so much energy trying to make socialism cool. They gloss right over the unbelievable death toll. BlazeTV's own Matt Kibbe made a great video on this exact topic.

Any notion of socialism in America is a luxury, made possible by capitalism. The woke companies aren't actually doing anything for socialism. If they're lucky, they might get a boost in sales, which is the only thing they want anyway.

We want to show you the truth. We want to tell you the stories you won't hear anywhere else, not on Netflix, not at some movie festival. We're going to tell you what mainstream media doesn't want you to know.

Look at how much history we've lost over the years. They changed it slowly. But they had to. Because textbooks were out. So people were watching textbooks. It was printed. You would bring the book home. Mom and dad might go through it and check it out. So you had to slowly do things.

Well, they're not anymore. There are no textbooks anymore. Now, you just change them overnight. And we are losing new history. History is being changed in realtime.

You have to write down what actually is happening and keep a journal. Don't necessarily tell everybody. Just keep a journal for what is happening right now. At some point, our kids won't have any idea of the truth. They will not have any idea of what this country was, how it really happened. Who were the good guys. Who were the bad guys. Who did what.

As Michelle Obama said. Barack knows. We have to change our history. Well, that's exactly what's happening. But it's happening at a very rapid pace.

We have to preserve our history. It is being systematically erased.

I first said this fifteen years ago, people need clay plots. We have to preserve our history as people preserved histories in ancient days, with the dead see scrolls, by putting them in caves in a clay pot. We have to preserve our history. It is being systematically erased. And I don't mean just the history of the founding of our country. I mean the history that's happening right now.

And the history that's happening right now, you're a problem if you're a conservative or a Christian. You are now a problem on the left, if you disagree and fall out of line at all. This is becoming a fascistic party. And you know what a fascist is. It doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican or an independent. If you believe it's my way or the highway, if you believe that people don't have a right to their opinion or don't have a right to their own life — you could do be a fascist.

Christianity might seem pretty well-protected in the U.S., but that's not the case in many parts of the globe.

On Easter Sunday, suicide bombers made the news for killing 290 innocent Christians in Sri Lanka and injuring another 500. On Tuesday, ISIS
claimed responsibility for the massacre. Of course, the Western world mourned this tragic loss of life on a holy day of worship, but we forget that this isn't an isolated incident. Indeed, Christians are discriminated at extreme levels worldwide, and it needs to be brought to light. And whenever we do highlight brutal persecutions such as the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka, we need to call them what they are — targeted attacks against Christians. Sadly, many of our politicians are deathly afraid to do so.

A 2018 Pew Research Center
study found that Christians are harassed in 144 countries — the most of any other faith — slightly outnumbering Muslims for the top of the list. Additionally, Open Doors, a non-profit organization that works to serve persecuted Christians worldwide, found in their 2019 World Watch List that over 245 million Christians are seriously discriminated against for their religious beliefs. Sadly, this translates into 4,136 Christians killed and 2,625 either arrested, sentenced, imprisoned, or detained without trial over the year-long study period. And when it comes to churches, those in Sri Lanka were merely added to a long list of 1,266 Christian buildings attacked for their religion.

These breathtaking stats receive very little coverage in the Western world. And there seems to be a profound hesitation from politicians in discussing the issue of persecution against Christians. In the case of the Sri Lanka bombings, there's even a reluctance to use the word "Christian."

After the horrific Pittsburgh Synagogue and New Zealand Mosque shootings, Democrats rightfully acknowledged the disturbing trend of targeted attacks against Jews and Muslims. But some of these same politicians refer to the Sri Lanka bombings with careless ambiguity.

So why is it so hard for our leaders to acknowledge the persecutions Christians face?

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, for instance, certainly did — calling the incursions "attacks on Easter worshippers." Understandably, the term confused and frustrated many Christians. Although, supporters of these politicians argued the term was appropriate since a recent Associated Press
report used it, and it was later picked up by a variety of media outlets, including Fox News. However, as more Democrats like 2020 presidential candidate Julián Castro and Rep. Dan Kildee continued to use the phrase "Easter worshippers," it became clear that these politicians were going out of their way to avoid calling a spade a spade.

So why is it so hard for our leaders to acknowledge the persecutions Christians face? For starters, Christianity in democratic countries like the U.S. is seen differently than in devastated countries like Somalia. According to Pew Research, over
70% of Americans are Christian, with 66% of those Christians being white and 35% baby boomers. So while diverse Christians from all over the world are persecuted for their faith—in the U.S., Christians are a dominant religion full of old white people. This places Christians at the bottom of progressives' absurd intersectional totem poll, therefore leaving little sympathy for their cause. However, the differing experiences of Christians worldwide doesn't take away from the fact that they are unified in their beliefs.

By refusing to name the faith of the Sri Lankan martyrs, politicians are sending a message that they have very little, if no, concern about the growing amount of persecution against Christians worldwide.

Martyrs don't deserve to be known as "Easter worshippers." They should be known by the Christian faith they gave their lives for. Decent politicians need to call the tragedy in Sri Lanka what it is — a vicious attack on the Christian faith.

Patrick Hauf (@PatrickHauf) is a writer for Young Voices and Vice President of Lone Conservative. His work can be found in the Washington Examiner, Townhall, FEE, and more.